White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/137961/
Version: Accepted Version
Book Section:
Howlett, Jonathan James orcid.org/0000-0002-1373-0737 (2016) ‘Decolonisation’ in China, 1949-1959. In: Bickers, Robert and Howlett, Jonathan J., (eds.) Britain and China, 1840-1970. Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia . Routledge , Abingdon , pp. 222-241.
[email protected] Reuse
Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item.
Takedown
If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by
‘Decolonisation’ in China, 1949-1959
Jonathan J. Howlett
While historians of empire have embraced the differences in the forms, natures and fates of
imperialisms across the world in the last several decades, China remains largely peripheral to
models largely focused on India, the Dominions and Africa. This is perhaps because China
was never a formal colony and also because it is often considered to be exceptional. Yet, as
the other chapters in this volume demonstrate, China was connected to the networks of the
imperial world and was itself a site of imperial competition and interaction. Britain’s
relationship with China was far more complicated than can be allowed for under models that
posit simplistic state-to-state relations. This chapter explores the ending of that particular
relationship after the Communist revolution of 1949, approaching it as a process of
‘decolonisation’ affected by a multiplicity of state and non-state actors.
The literature on decolonisation has also largely neglected China, except perhaps when
establishing the context for events elsewhere (such as in Malaya and Singapore). When it has
been studied, decolonisation in China seems to have followed a rather neat narrative: the
processes surrounding the abrogation of extraterritoriality and the normalisation of
Sino-foreign relations in the Republican period (1911-49) have, for example, been well covered.1 There were, however, always two spheres of Sino-British interaction: one at the level of
treaties, trade and diplomacy, and the other on the ground level within China.2 If we consider decolonisation to be more than a matter of high-level diplomacy and define it instead as
implying the removal of outside influences from a country, it is clear that when the Chinese
Such a flexible definition of decolonisation is not new: in recent decades decolonisation has
been explored in all its variety and confusion and in a profusion of local contexts. Historians
have long acknowledged that decolonisation is a historical process defined more by exception
than by rule.3Histories of decolonisation have ‘shifted South’ along with scholarship on the Cold War: placing increasing emphasis on the agency of post-colonial states in Asia, Africa
and Latin America.4Goscha and Ostermann’s volume Connected Histories is an excellent example of recent work in this area: ‘connecting’ previously separate histories of
decolonisation and the Cold War in Asia.5 Among the contributors to Connected Histories
was Chen Jian, whose chapter explored China’s stance as an important champion of anti
-imperialism in the 1950s and its role at the Bandung Conference as well as in conflicts in
Korea, Malaya and elsewhere.6 What Chen neglected was the fact that for the CCP, imperialism within China was not a thing of the past. The idea, first advanced by Mao
Zedong in October 1949, that under the CCP China had ‘stood up’ and expelled the forces of
imperialism seems to have been widely accepted both in and outside of China, but in fact the
CCP struggled to eliminate foreign, especially British, influences from within China
throughout the 1950s.7
The early years of Communist rule have been re-conceptualized by historians over the past
two decades and it is vital, as Kirby has observed, that international and comparative
elements are not forgotten.8 New insights can be gained through deploying concepts and comparisons from wider literatures on decolonisation. While recognising that the Chinese
developed many pragmatic and original strategies, this chapter will also suggest that in its
moment of transformation, China was not necessarily exceptional. Across the world, the
between governments and their populations. This era was defined by the parallel (and
sometimes linked) processes of the accelerated decline of the Europe-centred order through
decolonisation and the emergence of a new socialist world led by the Soviet Union.9 China sat at the confluence of these two movements, facing state-building challenges familiar to the
governments of new and reconstructing states across the world.
DECOLONISING A ‘SEMI-COLONY’
The nature of the British presence in China has long been disputed. Regardless of whether it
is labelled ‘semi-colonialism’ or ‘informal empire’, it certainly shared many of the
characteristics of imperialism, including territorial enclaves, extraterritoriality and
intervention in the domestic and foreign policy of the colonized.10 Osterhammel has argued that this was primarily a ‘business system’, predicated on the interlocking interests of
companies and states.11 Such a definition is useful, but it also obscures the great variety of foreign influences in China that bore testimony to its complicated position within global
networks of empire, war and migration: as this volume has shown, Britons and other
foreigners went to China for a variety of reasons and interacted with Chinese people in a
myriad of ways. In November 1950 the CCP counted a total of 11,939 foreigners in Shanghai
alone, belonging to around forty different nationalities. Among them were 1,315 ‘British’
people (many of whom were from the wider empire), constituting the largest national group
from a Western country.12
Regardless of how historians define British and other foreign influences, Chinese nationalists
‘forerunner’ of their revolution, had come to see anti-imperialism as a prerequisite for
national renewal.14 As soon as Sun’s party, the Guomindang, came to power in 1927 they had begun campaigning for the normalisation of Sino-foreign relations. In response, British
diplomats carried out a protracted, negotiated surrender of their privileges (the trappings of
‘imperialism’) in order to preserve business interests. This retreat was not uncontested by
business and settler groups.15 This was one example of a familiar pattern, followed across formal and informal empire, though as White has observed, the relationship between business
and policy-makers was not always an uncomplicated ‘gentlemanly-capitalist’ partnership and
after 1945 Cold War concerns often overrode economic considerations.16
By the early 1930s sovereignty had been regained over almost two thirds of the foreign
concessions and control was reasserted over China’s customs, salt and postal administrations.
The Shanghai International Settlement was occupied by the Japanese in 1941 and in 1943 the
British and Americans negotiated its return to Chinese sovereignty and the abrogation of all
their remaining treaty privileges including extraterritoriality.17 By 1949 the Guomindang had undone much of the legal and political framework underpinning foreign imperialism, but
their achievements were downplayed by the CCP who portrayed them as compromised
collaborators.18
While the formal bases of imperialism were undermined, informal influences were still
apparent in 1949. Despite the departure of large numbers of foreigners before the CCP
takeover, China remained home to extensive networks of foreign businesses, diplomats and
missionaries. The CCP saw the final elimination of the foreign presence as a vital precursor
to securing the independence of ‘New China’.19Mao famously declared that the ‘big house’
‘after the house has been swept clean’ could the CCP ‘invite in guests’. In linking China’s
independence to the need to eliminate foreign interests, especially commercial interests, Mao
was foreshadowing international debates about neo-colonialism which rose to prominence in
the 1950s and 1960s (though he not the first to do so).20 While there have been studies on
how the house was ‘swept’ after 1949, this process has not yet been approached as
‘decolonisation’.21
Robin Winks has argued that the decolonisation of ‘informal empire’ was a messier process
than that of ‘formal empire’: hequotes a Mexican proverb which says that to divorce one’s
spouse is a matter of simple law, but to divorce a lover is impossible. In formal empire, he
argues, indigenous elites could be groomed, handovers could be delayed and in the end the
birth of a new nation offered a fresh start. The ‘internal partners’ of informal empire, on the
other hand, were left in limbo and colonial legacies were incompletely purged.22 We should, of course, be wary of presenting the decolonisation of any part of the world as a formality, it
was a complex and often violent process, but Winks’ question remains valid: how did the
Chinese, the ‘internal partner’ here, approach the elimination of the legacies of
semi-colonialism after 1949?
ECONOMIC DECOLONISATION
In January 1949 Stalin’s advisor in Beijing suggested that the Chinese should nationalize all
foreign property except for American assets, as only the Americans were capable of
retaliation. The CCP had first decided on a policy of nationalisation in 1928, but now Mao
replied that they would have to move slowly because foreign capital was so closely
insurance, real estate, public utilities and shipping, amongst other important sectors. In a later
conversation, Mao told Stalin’s envoy that ‘in order to destroy the enemy, one should grow
strong economically’ and this meant avoiding risks.24China’s economy had suffered greatly
during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) and a series of economic crises between 1945 and
1949 had contributed to the collapse of the Guomindang by degrading their ability to make
war and eroding their credibility as an effective government.25 The CCP leadership saw that the economy needed thorough reconstruction: employment and economic security were
paramount, but how could this be achieved alongside the elimination of foreign companies?
In hindsight, the British withdrawal from China appears to be a logical consequence of
post-war decline, yet this was not apparent at the time.26 Britain remained influential on the world
stage: it was America’s chief ally, it was a founder member of the United Nations Security
Council and it still possessed one of the world’s largest economies.27 Britons in China desired
to maintain a trading presence and it was widely believed that the Communist government
would require their services in order to access world markets.28 In 1949 there were 1,104 foreign enterprises in China. Although the Americans represented global Communism’s great
nemesis, the British remained more significant on the ground: around 35 per cent of all
foreign businesses in China were British-owned and British interests accounted for 68 per
cent of the total capital invested.29 When American diplomatic personnel were withdrawn in early 1950 and US assets were frozen in December that year, the British were the most
significant foreign contingent remaining.30
China’s policy towards foreign businesses in the 1950s was shaped by three main factors:
domestic trends in the nationalisation and socialisation of the economy; the need to ensure
like their Chinese counterparts, were offered protection under the banner of ‘New
Democracy’ (xin minzhuzhuyi), an interim period of moderation designed to lay the
groundwork for a later transition to socialism. Private business was allowed to profit as long
as capitalists worked in the ‘national interest’, while strategically vital companies were
brought under state control.31 Regardless of their nationality, all companies struggled under
the pressure of deflationary measures, high taxes and the Guomindang’s economic blockade,
which affected access to materials and markets. Between 1950 and 1952 foreign businesses
were weakened using administrative measures, such as punitive taxation, as well as pressure
from workforces, to extract capital and increase liabilities, but this did not yet amount to a
plan for nationalisation.32 To prevent a mass withdrawal, foreign firms were not allowed to
dispose of their assets through sale or closure unless they first obtained the government’s
approval. Approval was seldom forthcoming as the government feared unemployment and
harmful effects on production. 33 Foreign managers were denied exit permits until their
companies’ affairs were settled, a policy that has become known as ‘hostage capitalism’.34
The short-term impetus for the purging of foreign businesses came with the socialist
transformation of the Chinese economy. Historians have long seen the New Democratic
policy as little more than a rhetorical device used to veil the CCP's true intentions. Bennis
Wai-yip So has argued that in the economic sphere at least there was no hidden agenda to
eliminate the private sector before 1953. The Communists, he argues, were initially reluctant
even to form state-private joint enterprises, for fear of alarming capitalists who might see this
as a step towards nationalisation. Such enterprises were only created when the company had
previously been part-owned by capitalists who had fled, or to safeguard crucial companies.
The CCP did, however, conceive of capitalism as being a chaotic phenomenon that was
planning.35 The private sector gradually recovered and capitalists made profits: production in 1951 was 60 per cent higher than in 1949.36 The problem, So argues, was that because the CCP placed strict controls over the supply of raw materials and the purchase of finished
products private factories essentially became state contractors. Attempts to develop the
private sector failed under the state-controlled system.37 The elimination of the Chinese private sector necessitated an accelerated removal of foreign companies.
The Chinese were not alone in going down the path of nationalisation to speed post-war
reconstruction: after the Second World War there was a global shift towards state
intervention and planned economies, even in capitalist states like Britain and France, in order
to provide basic guarantees of work, welfare and stability. For many Communist and
nationalist parties across the world (especially those with bad memories of dealing with
Western businesses), the Soviet model of fast industrial growth under the aegis of a strong
Party-state based on egalitarian values was very appealing.38The Soviet Union’s economic and technological lead was followed in a diverse range of countries, with Soviet experts
guiding the process (some invited, others imposed).39 Many states in transition towards Communism had periods of New Democracy in common and there are strong parallels (yet to
be thoroughly explored), between the China after 1949 and the Central and Eastern European
Communist states after 1945. Between 1945 and 1949, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria,
East Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia and Romania all nationalized large sectors of their
economies. The majority of foreign companies in these countries were expropriated (with or
without compensation).40
In China, very few foreign businesses were expropriated, with the major exceptions being a
Chinese decided in 1952 to adapt their ‘policy of squeeze’, previously used to heap liabilities
on foreign companies, to engineer their exit on favourable terms, controlling the pace of
closure to prevent disruption.42 In late August 1951 the Yee Tsoong Tobacco Company had set a precedent for the closure of all large foreign companies by offering the Chinese
government all of its assets in exchange for its liabilities and permission to close.43 A Foreign
Office observer described their ‘stock pattern’:
Their aim is to make a firm give up its property by its own act, so that no claim can lie
against the Chinese Government for restitution or compensation. Their method is to
make the firm totally insolvent by denying it the possibility of continuing its business,
by multiplying its liabilities and by refusing it permission to meet these liabilities by
sale of property & stock. The means used are unfair and very effective.
This policy was not directed explicitly against British firms: it was simply the case that the
majority of those remaining were British.44 These practices were, according to another
Foreign Office specialist, ‘standard practice throughout the Soviet orbit’.45 The number of
British firms in Shanghai declined from 376 in May 1949 to 25 in 1954.46 It is difficult to assign a value for lost British assets: A commonly quoted (unofficial) estimate of their 1949
value was £300 million.47 Some British firms moved faster to shed their liabilities than
others, chargé d’affaires Humphrey Trevelyan, noted that Jardine, Matheson & Co., for
example, had made ‘concession after concession’ in their haste.48 They were keen to shed
their unprofitable fixed assets and shift to a new pattern of trade via Hong Kong.
‘Surrender’ on the Yee Tsoong model was seen by the Foreign Office as having potentially
policymakers were more concerned with the situation in Iran.49 After the nationalisation of the strategically important Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951 the British and the Iranians
were locked in a standoff over the ownership of the world’s largest refinery at Abadan until
1953 when the nationalist premier was replaced with the pro-Western Shah in a coup d’état.
Events in China were one part of a worrying trend: as Britain’s military and political prestige
declined, so did the country’s ability to secure the former spheres of influence in which
commerce was conducted. This, no doubt, informed the Foreign Office’s decision not to
support a wholesale withdrawal of British firms from China.50
The decolonisation of any country poses an economic challenge: there must be either a
withdrawal of foreign businesses, which creates a vacuum, or the continuance of existing
commercial businesses, which carries the risk of neo-colonial economic dominance.51 In
Southeast Asia for example, the Pacific War had devastated the economies of the region’s
emerging nations, like China, these states wanted to reconstruct and develop their economies.
Most used state-directed central plans to do so.52 As Lindblad has observed, they all faced the same dilemma: all sought to reduce their reliance on colonial trading networks and develop
indigenous industry through import substitution and industrialisation, as had been tried in
China as early as the 1930s, but such restructuring required huge amounts of capital.
Financial hierarchies replaced colonial ones. The Philippines offered a prime example of the
dangers of ‘neo-colonialism’: after independence in 1946, their economy remained
dominated by American companies.53 Malaysia found it similarly difficult to break away from British trading networks.54Despite their pragmatic gradualism, the CCP’s aim was to eliminate Western economic influences thoroughly and secure true economic independence.
China was quite effective in severing its old ties of dependency, making use of foreign
self-reliance and trade with other socialist states. China’s policy was echoed in Sukarno’s
Indonesia. After Indonesia’s independence in 1945, British and American shipping, banking
and manufacturing companies, many of which had also operated in China, continued to
dominate large sectors of the Indonesian economy. In the late 1950s and early 1960s they
came under pressure from nationalist economic policies (under ‘Sosialisme Indonesia’)
before eventually being nationalized (albeit temporarily) in 1963-65.55
CULTURAL DECOLONISATION IN SHANGHAI
Just as economic independence was crucial to any decolonising state, so was the removal of
foreign influence in the cultural sphere and its replacement with indigenous (traditional or
invented) practices and culture. In China, this was particularly important in the nation’s
largest and most commercially developed city, Shanghai. The city was described in CCP
propaganda as the ‘“fortress bridgehead”of imperialist aggression against China’.56 May
1949 marked the birth of ‘New Shanghai’ and‘Old Shanghai’ was vilified.57 As imperialism
was believed to have permeated all aspects of city life, corrupting and degrading its citizens,
a thorough re-ordering of Shanghai’s politics, economics and culture was needed. A few
aspects of the CCP’s transformative efforts are discussed below. A desire to reform Shanghai
was not new: the Guomindang had seen civic and national renewal and anti-imperialism as
being inextricably linked.58
Mass political campaigns were a commonly used tool for inducing social change in the early
period of Communist rule, they differed in form and function, but here we shall briefly
examine the impact of the Campaign to Resist America and Aid Korea on the cultural
politicize daily life, campaigns were extremely effective tools for social engineering.59 The nation-wide Campaign to Resist America and Aid Korea began in late 1950, its practical aim
being to support the efforts of the Chinese armies in Korea through production drives,
fund-raising and other economic measures. It was also intended to educate Chinese citizens on the
dangers of imperialism and to encourage them to sever any remaining emotional ties to the
West.60 The Campaign attacked both ‘hard’ targets, such as cultural, educational, religious
and charitable organisations and ‘soft’ targets in consumer culture and daily life. As Shanghai
was both China’s most industrialized and most foreign influenced city, the campaign was
carried out particularly thoroughly there.61
The elimination of ‘imperialist propaganda organs’ was seen as a crucial step. Mao had noted
in December 1949 that the British predominated in commerce, while the Americans
dominated the cultural sphere, especially in missionary associations.62 The outbreak of the Korean War accelerated the process, especially because the freezing of American assets
meant that the majority of foreign-subsidized organisations were in dire economic
circumstances. In early 1951 the State Council announced measures for dealing with
foreign-subsidized organisations, including schools, hospitals and churches. Through ‘registration’
the CCP exerted control over foreign-run and foreign-subsidized organisations, restricting
their actions and turning them into private or state-run Chinese organisations.63 A total of 666 organisations were registered and among these 545 received foreign funds. Of this
number, 121 were actually managed by foreigners; 263 relied on US funds; and 32 on British.
The majority were closed or made into Chinese-run organisations later that year.64
Attempts were also made to remove more indirect foreign cultural influences from everyday
(and Pinewood) fashions and culture an avid movie-going public.65 Foreign films were not immediately cracked down upon and in fact they continued to draw large audiences: the
Shanghai Culture Bureau reported that 646 British and American films were shown to
14,505,773 people between April 1949 and November 1950.66 The CCP were anxious to
provide an alternative to these ‘immoral’ films and so new regulations emerged in April
1950, stating that at least a quarter of each cinema’s monthly programme had to be devoted to
Chinese or Soviet ‘progressive films’ and the advertising of foreign features was carefully
restricted.67 That same month, the CCP strengthened control over the Chinese film industry, making it clear to all concerned that cinema was no longer simply about business or art, but
rather a highly politicized medium, subject to strict ideological censorship. In July, an
advisory committee was established to police the industry.68 New Chinese films were moral
in tone: one Beijing shop worker was reported as saying ‘Nowadays films teach people how
to be good persons. They are not like the old pictures that dealt with crime and the
extravagant living of rich people and foreigners.’69 An advertisement for the Sino-Soviet
collaborative effort ‘Chinese People’s Victory’ in October 1950 announced it to be ‘the first
picture of a high artistic standard and a political and educational significance that ever
appears on the screen!’70
The CCP’s English-language newspaper The Shanghai News pointed out to its readers in
June 1950 that: where once the listings pages were overrun with Betty Grables and Errol
Flynns, now Chinese movie-goers were flocking to see Chinese and Soviet pictures. They
reported that admissions to American and British films had fallen from 46.9 per cent of the
total in November 1949 to 28 per cent in May 1950. This change was not brought about
awakening on the part of the people themselves. ‘All this goes to indicate,’ the article
continued,
that even the sub-colonial urbanites in Shanghai have undergone a thorough
overhauling, that they have forsaken Hollywood and all that goes with it, its
make-beliefs, its compradore culture, and what not.71
The Shanghai authorities capitalized on the momentum of the Campaign to Resist America
and Aid Korea to purge foreign films, making their prohibition seem as though it came in
response to popular demands. Shanghai’s young people's ‘hostility towards American
imperialism had been awakened’ said the Cultural Bureau, as it sent propaganda teams to
speak at mass meetings on the need to ‘liquidate’ the ‘poisonous ideology’ of cultural
imperialism. By December, Western films had been banned. 72
Spatial reordering and the politicisation of the lived environment were seen as integral to
reshaping society. At this time new ‘socialist spaces’ were created throughout the Communist
world and old spaces were assigned new meanings and functions.73 In Shanghai, some sites
of ‘imperialist influence’ were demolished while others, like the Bund, were occupied. In
1951, for example, it was announced that the site of the city’s ninety-year-old racecourse
would be taken over to build a huge ‘People’s Square’ which was to be a centre for
revolutionary activity. The racecourse, the CCP said, had been established by ‘British
imperialist gold diggers’ to corrupt the city’s citizens, it had bankrupted the Chinese people,
Everyone knows that this ground has been branded with the indelible mark of the big
powers’ aggression against China… this piece of land which has been occupied by the
imperialists for over 90 years has returned to the embrace of the people of Shanghai…
it is to be used by the people of Shanghai!75
Shanghai’s new municipal sites tended to be inland, away from the riverside Bund, reflecting
perhaps the city’s shifting role, from an outward-looking trading city to a city that served the
Chinese revolution, atoning for its past indulgences. This was a pattern reflected in other
Asian port cities, including Rangoon.76
HUMAN LEGACIES
In the late 1940s many Shanghai youths had come to define themselves as ‘little aeroplanes’
(xiao feiji). These youths were the Chinese equivalent of American bobby-soxers: teens
known for their wild jazz dancing. These free-spirited youths wore knitted sweaters inscribed
with phrases such as ‘I Love You’. By January 1951 they had been made the target of a press
campaign accusing them of immorality, robbery and rape.77 They were an example of one of the least well studied legacies of the spread of Anglophone culture in China: its adoption by
middle and upper class elites. Throughout Shanghai’s history, foreigners had relied on the
cooperation of English-speaking Chinese people who occupied a Sino-foreign grey-area in
which they worked variously as ‘comprador’ middlemen, cultural influencers and political
negotiators and lived in close contact with foreign employers, colleagues and friends.78 Many attended English speaking colleges and others studied overseas. As nationalism intensified,
the cultural space they inhabited narrowed and their cosmopolitanism put their authenticity as
victims of class warfare during the Cultural Revolution, but little remains known about the
struggles of Westernized men in the early 1950s. This is perhaps because of the difficulty of
locating source materials: such people can usually only be happened upon from time to time
in the archive and sometimes in the literature, usually with reference to the fate of capitalists
or the implementation of campaigns.79
The story of Westernized men in China has parallels in global patterns of decolonisation:
‘Decolonisation’ argued Frantz Fanon, ‘is the veritable creation of new men’ and thus, we
might infer, the destruction of ‘old men’. In Fanon’s opinion, the ‘national middle class’ of
‘under-developed countries’ had been remarkable only because of their ‘spiritual penury’ and
their tendency to be set in a ‘profoundly cosmopolitan mould’. They were products of
colonialism: ‘not engaged in production, nor in invention, nor building, nor labour, [they
were] completely canalized into activities of the intermediary type.’ In the eyes of the
revolutionary they lacked the necessary ambition and skills to build the nation anew and so
they had to be destroyed in order to prevent neo-colonialism.The CCP would no doubt agree
with Fanon’s assertion that the ‘proof of success [of decolonisation] lies in a whole social
structure being changed from the bottom up’ and that this is ‘always a violent
phenomenon’.80
The long-established British-China firm Butterfield & Swire were extremely concerned over
the fate of their senior Chinese staff. Once Swires withdrew, these men would be forced to
register as unemployed, necessitating a lengthy investigation into their pasts, as well as
criticism and self-criticism sessions aimed at transforming them into functioning members of
the new society. Swires told the British Government that they feared that, because of their
spies. At the very least they would be denied good jobs and the chance to join union-based
welfare schemes. Writing in 1955, British Consul General Fred Garner disagreed, he
suggested that they would not be ‘subjected to actual persecution’ as their skills were needed.
At worst, they would receive low status jobs. He refused suggestions that the British
Government should approach the Chinese on the men’s behalf requesting that they be
allowed to go to Hong Kong (‘impossible’), or kept on retainers (‘it was not B.&S. that
started the revolution!’). ‘We also have to remember’, he concluded, ‘I think, that the
Chinese are great actors and quite expert at adapting themselves to different circumstances.
They would have to learn the language of the revolution,’ he said, quoting the Chinese
saying: “When the wind blows, the grass bends”.81 Garner was over-optimistic: instead men and women such as these endured nearly three decades of political attacks and humiliation,
culminating in outright persecution during the Cultural Revolution.
It is likely that many Westernized, Anglophone people were among those who suffered, were
demeaned, executed or who committed suicide during the CCP’s early campaigns. In April
1951, for example, one of the British textile firm Patons & Baldwins’ sub-mangers was
executed along with his whole family in front of a crowd of 15,000 as part of the Campaign
to Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries. He was one of an estimated 712,000 people executed
across China, a number determined by quota.82According to Patons’ manager, the execution
had been preceded by almost a year of ‘full dress’ attacks ‘under the guise of production’
because the man had been identified as a class enemy.83 The Three and Five Antis Campaigns (1951-52) saw suicides of capitalists and managers become commonplace in Shanghai and
elsewhere.84 Suicide was an extreme course, taken by some as the ultimate rejection of the new government (but for the CCP it was also the ultimate confession of guilt). The New York
shopkeepers, merchants and managers committed suicide. The day apparently culminated in
an act of public spectacle as the managers of two companies loudly denounced the
Communists through megaphones from a rooftop before jumping to their deaths.85 Another prominent suicide was that of a leading member of the First National People’s Political
Consultative Committee, Lu Zuofu. Lu was a shipping and industrial magnate from Sichuan
and he had previously appeared to be the archetypal ‘national capitalist’ cooperating under
‘New Democracy’.86 There was, of course, some room for accommodation (the CCP were
certainly not as fanatical in their millenarian violence as the Khmer Rouge who’s efforts to
remake Cambodian society between 1975-79 resulted in the deaths of an estimated one to two
million people, or roughly one third of the population87), but the hardships experienced by these men remained the product of the coming to power of a regime that was hostile to their
class backgrounds, their lifestyles and indeed, their very persons.
One man in a difficult situation was Linson Dzau (Cao Linsheng). Dzau was born to the one
of China’s richest families and had been educated in the United States.88 He represented
several British and American firms and in late 1949 he was invited to Beijing to discuss
business by his Tsinghua University fraternity brother Dr. Ji Chaoding, who was now an
important figure in the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee. Dzau later reported to the
American Consulate in Shanghai that he had been received cordially, but after ten days of
interviews, he was delivered to the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, where the
interviews became ‘unfriendly’: he was told that there had been bad reports and that not even
... I feel at times that some institution should pay me for the sleepless nights and the
hours of discussions in smoky, drafty [sic.] rooms requiring at all times nerve-mind
balancing feats to be able come out still as a Chinese befitting their conception of a
Chinese and yet fair to foreigners without appearing at any time a ‘running dog’ of
imperialists and capitalists.90
Archival traces suggest that after this Dzau experienced a period of prolonged rootlessness:
dallying in the company of ‘third force’ politicians and ‘guerrilla generals’ of varying
authenticity in Hong Kong.91 Penniless, he then left for Macao where he worked eighteen-hour days to earn money to send to his family in China. He wrote of this time:
I suffered extreme depressions, almost lost my mind … Faith in Christ's word and a
resolve to work to the brink of exhaustion, forgetting losses of the past, praying that
Mai and the children be granted exit … was my only remaining strength
Several years later, Dzau was helped by former classmates to set up a private academy, where
he was joined by his wife and grandchild.92 Although his story is atypical, because of his background and connections, it remains illustrative of the plight of those who did not fit into
the new political and social order. As revolutionary nationalism intensified, people like Dzau,
living in the intermediate Sino-foreign zones, proved to be neither Chinese enough to stay
and adapt, nor foreign enough to have an obvious exit route.
There is much to be gained from exploring the elimination of the British presence in China
with reference to literature on decolonisation and in its international context. While there are
many obvious differences between China and the countries to which models are most often
applied, it is also apparent that China shared many experiences, including: having to explore
pragmatic ways to shape the national economy after the withdrawal of previously dominant
foreign businesses; eliminating the cultural legacies of imperialism; and dealing with its
human legacies, the compromised ‘bourgeois elites’.
Perhaps one of the most important lessons to be drawn from such comparisons is that
although China went through enormous changes after 1949, they were not necessarily
changes that were particular to it. Across the world, states had to find ways to reconstruct or
to build something new: the decolonising states of Southeast Asia struggled to reorient their
economies and to free them from colonial networks; the New Democracies of Eastern Europe
turned to the Soviet model to build their socialist economies. One way of conceptualising
decolonisation is that the withdrawal (sometimes partial) of colonizers created vacuums in
different spheres that needed to be filled. The CCP took different approaches to different
aspects of foreign influence: their economic policy was largely aimed at preventing the
creation of such a vacuum through prolonging the departure of foreign companies, but in the
cultural sphere, they created a sharp dichotomy between ‘old’, imperialist Shanghai and
‘new’, socialist Shanghai. Foreign ‘propaganda’ could not be tolerated as it offered a
dissenting voice just as the new regime sought to cement its revolutionary legitimacy.
Similarly, English-speaking middle and upper class people were quickly ostracized in a
From the British perspective, was it, as Winks suggested, easier to decolonize formal empire
than informal empire? Britain certainly had less control over the withdrawal here, but the
stakes also remained considerably lower than in formal empire. Winks posited that the
decolonisation of informal empire is messier because there is no fresh start. In China the
Communists certainly wanted to remake society anew, but their efforts to eliminate the
legacies of the old society were necessarily (and frustratingly) patchy and incomplete in the
1950s, with decolonisation of different fields taking place at varied speeds. This demonstrates
that even at the moment that a strong Chinese state was able to begin purging China of
unwanted Western influences, it still remained difficult to differentiate between what was
truly ‘Chinese’ and what was ‘British’, ‘foreign’, 'semi-colonial' or ‘imperialist’.
1 William C. Kirby, ‘The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the
Republican Era,’ The China Quarterly, 150, 1997, pp. 433-458; Nicholas Clifford, Retreat From China; British
Policy in the Far East, 1937-1941, London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1967; Edmund, S. K. Fung, ‘Anti
-Imperialism and the Left Guomindang’, Modern China, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 39–76.
2 Robert A. Bickers, Britain in China: Community, Culture and Colonialism, 1900-49, Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1999, p. 68.
3 Martin Shipway, Decolonization and its Impact: A comparative approach to the end of the colonial empires,
Oxford, Blackwell, 2008, pp. 93-9, 108-112, 168, 236.
4 Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War; Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp.1-7.
5 Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann (eds), Connecting histories: decolonization and the Cold
War in Southeast Asia, 1945-1962, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
6 Chen Jian, ‘Bridging revolution and decolonization: the "Bandung discourse" in China's early Cold War
experience’ in Goscha and Ostermann (eds), Connecting histories, pp. 137-166.
7 Mao Zedong, ‘The Chinese People have Stood Up’ in, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Peking: Foreign
8 William C. Kirby, ‘China’s Internationalization in the Early People’s Republic: Dreams of a Socialist World
Economy,’ China Quarterly, December 2006, pp. 870-890.
9 John Darwin, After Tamerlane: the Global History of Empire Since 1405, London: Allen Lane, 2007, p. 428.
10 Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Semi-Colonialism’ and Empire in Twentieth Century China: Towards a Framework of
Analysis,’ in W.J. Mommsen, and Jürgen Osterhammel (eds), Imperialism and After: Continuities and
Discontinuities, London: German Historical Institute, 1986, pp. 290-300.
11 Ibid., pp. 302-309.
12 Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA) B1-2-3658, Shanghaishi Renmin Zhengfu Waishi Chu, Shanghai Shi
waiqiao gaikuang [Shanghai People’s Government, Situation of Foreign Nationals in Shanghai], 31 January
1952, p. 9.
13 Beverley Hooper, China Stands Up; Ending the Western Presence, 1948-1950, London: Allen & Unwin,
1986, p. 1.
14 Marie-Claire Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, pp. 361-2.
15 Bickers, Britain in China, pp. 115-169; Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Imperialism in Transition: British Business and
the Chinese Authorities, 1931-37’, The China Quarterly, No. 98, 1984, pp. 262-5.
16 Nicholas J. White, ‘The Business and the Politics of Decolonization: The British Experience in the Twentieth
Century,’ The Economic History Review, 53, 3, 2000, pp. 544-564.
17 Robert A. Bickers, ‘Settlers and Diplomats; The End of British Hegemony in the International Settlement,
1937-1945,’ in Christian Henriot and Yeh Wen-hsin (eds), In the Shadow of the Rising Sun; Shanghai Under
Japanese Occupation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
18 Clifford, Retreat from China.
19 Mao Zedong, ‘Farewell, Leighton Stuart!’ Selected Works, vol. iv, pp. 433-40.
20 Zhang Hanfu zhuan bian xie zu [Biography of Zhang Hanfu editorial and writing group], Zhang Hanfu zhuan
[Biography of Zhang Hanfu], Shijie Zhishi Chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2003, pp. 142-3.
21 Hooper, China Stands Up, see also Shao Wenguang, China, Britain and Businessmen: Political and
Commercial Relations, 1949-57, Basingstoke: Macmillan, Oxford: 1991; David Clayton , Imperialism
Revisited: Political and Economic Relations Between Britain and China, 1950-54, Basingstoke: Macmillan,
London: St. Martin's Press, 1997 and Aron Shai, The Fate of British and French Firms In China 1949-54 –
never return’: Communist takeovers of British companies in Shanghai (1949–1954), Modern Asian Studies, Vol.
47, No. 6, November 2013, pp. 1941 - 1976.
22 Robin W. Winks, ‘On Decolonization and Informal Empire,’ The American Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 3,
1976, pp. 540-556.
23 Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), Memorandum of Conversation between Mikoyan and Mao,
31 January 1949.
24 CWIHP, Memorandum of Conversation between Mikoyan and Mao, 5 February 1949.
25 Chang Kia-ngau, The Inflationary Spiral: The Experience in China, 1939-1950, Massachusetts: MIT Press,
1958.
26 Darwin, After Tamerlane, p. 441.
27 Kirby, ‘Internationalisation of China’, p. 443.
28 The National Archives (TNA), Kew, FO 371/75938, ‘Position of British subjects in China;’ Minutes of the
13thAGM of British Residents’ Association of China, 16 December 1948.
29 Howlett, 'The British boss', p. 1951; Zhang Hanfu zhuan, p. 146; Zhou Weiming, Tang Zhenchang, Shanghai
Waishi Zhi [Record of Shanghai Foreign Affairs], Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe [Shanghai
Academy of Social Sciences Publishing House], 1999, pp. 314-5.
30 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Beijing, 118-00014-07, Wo Waijiao Bu zhaoji youguan bumen kaihui
shangtao Yingguo shangren cheli wenti [Ministry of Foreign Affairs assembles all relevant bureaux to meeting
to discuss the problem of the withdrawal of British merchants], 24 May 1952-30 May 1952.
31 Mao, ‘On New Democracy,’ January 1940, in Selected Works, vol. ii, pp. 338-84.
32 Howlett, 'The British boss', pp. 1955-1957.
33 Hooper, China Stands Up, pp. 78-80.
34 Thomas N. Thompson, China's Nationalization of Foreign Firms: the Politics of Hostage Capitalism,
1959-57, Baltimore: School of Law, University of Maryland, 1979.
35 Bennis Wai-yip So, ‘The Policy-Making and Political Economy of the Abolition of Private Ownership in the
Early 1950s: Findings from New Material,’ The China Quarterly, 2002, No. 171, pp. 682-703.
36 Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai; China’s Gateway to Modernity, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009,
pp. 354-5
37 So, ‘Policy-Making’, pp. 682-703.
39 Shen Zhihua, Sulian zhuan jia zai Zhongguo, 1948-1960 [Soviet Experts in China, 1948-1960], Beijing:
Zhongguo guo ji guang bo chu ban she [Chinese International Broadcasting Press], 2003.
40 Adrian Webb, The Routledge Companion to Central and Eastern Europe Since 1949, London: Routledge,
2008, pp. 171-8, 248-9; Jerzy Tomaszewski, The Socialist Regimes of East Central Europe, London: Routledge,
1999, pp. 79-87.
41 Howlett, 'The British boss', pp. 1957-1967.
42 MFA 118-00014-07, Yingguo shangren cheli wenti.
43 Shao, China, Britain, pp. 124-8.
44 TNA FO 676/492, Foreign business interest in China: British, 1954, Part 1; Foreign Office Minute, 27 March
1954.
45 TNA FO 371/75929, British coal mining interests in China; minute written on Nanjing to Foreign Office, No.
522, 27/4/49.
46 Zhang Hanfu zhuan, pp. 146, 149-151.
47 TNA FO 371/83347 British Commercial Policy in China: Trading conditions and positions of British firms in
China, 1950; Memorandum on Parliamentary Question, British Assets, China, 6 May 1950.
48 TNA FO 676/493, Foreign business interest in China: British, 1954, Part 2; Beijing to Foreign Office, 5
October 1954.
49 TNA FO 371/83345, British Commercial Policy in China; Note on a Discussion with Nathan about the
Position of the Kailuan Mining Administration, 30 March 1950.
50 Mostafa Elm, Oil, Power, and Principle: Iran's Oil Nationalization and its Aftermath, Syracuse, N.Y:
Syracuse University Press, 1992.
51 On the economics of decolonisation see: Sarah Stockwell, The Business of Decolonization: British business
strategies in the Gold Coast, Oxford: Clarendon, 2000; Nicholas J. White, Business, government, and the end of
empire: Malaya, 1942-1957, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; Maria Misra, Business, race, and politics
in British India, c.1850-1960, Oxford: Clarendon, 1999.
52 Norman G. Owen, ‘Economic and Social Change’ in Nicholas Tarling (ed.), The Cambridge History of
Southeast Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, Vol. 4, pp. 139-44.
53 Thomas J. Lindblad, ‘The Economic Impact of Decolonization in Southeast Asia; Economic Nationalism and
Foreign Direct Investment, 1945-1965,’ in Marc Frey et al, The Transformation of Southeast Asia; International
54 Ibid., pp. 35-51.
55 Nicholas J. White, ’Surviving Sukarno: British Business in Post Colonial Indonesia, 1950–1967’, Modern
Asian Studies, 46, 5, 2012, pp. 1277-1315.
56 ‘Shanghai Gaikuang’ [Shanghai Outline] in Shanghai Shi Danganguan (Bian), Shanghai Jiefang [Shanghai
Municipal Archives (ed.), The Liberation of Shanghai], Shanghai: Shanghai Sanlian Shudian, [Shanghai Third
United Bookshop], 1999, p. 3.
57 Yomi Braester, ‘"A Big Dying Vat": The Vilifying of Shanghai during the Good Eighth Company Campaign,’
Modern China, 31, 4, 2005, pp. 411-447
58 Frederic Wakeman, Jr., ‘Licensing Leisure: The Chinese Nationalists' Attempt to Regulate Shanghai, 1927
-49,’ The Journal of Asian Studies, 54, 1, 1995, pp. 19-42.
59 Richard Gaulton, ‘Political mobilization in Shanghai, 1949-1951’, in Christopher Howe (ed.), Shanghai:
Revolution and development in an Asian metropolis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 35-65.
60 SMA A59-1-253-3, Zhonggong Shanghai Shiwei Gongyong Shiye Weiyuanhui guanyu Kang Mei Yuan Chao
Yundong de zongjie [CCP Shanghai Municipal Committee, Public Utilities Committee, summary of the
Campaign to Resist America and Aid Korea], 1953.
61 Zhou et al, Shanghai Waishi Zhi, pp. 50-1.
62 CWIHP, Conversation between Stalin and Mao, Moscow, 16 December 1949.
63 SMA B1-1-1996, Zhongyang Zhengwuyuan guanyu waiguo jintie ji waizi jingying de wenhua jiaoyu jiuji
jiguan ji zongjiao tuanti fangzhen de jueding [Central State Council decision on policy towards foreign
subsidised and foreign managed cultural, education, and relief organisations and religious groups], January
1951.
64 Zhou et al., Shanghai waishi zhi, pp. 324-8.
65 On the elimination of foreign films see Hooper, China Stands Up, pp. 151-7
66 SMA B172-1-35, Shanghai Shi Wenhua Ju guanyu ben shi 1949 nian – 1951 nian ge yingyuan shangying
yingpian, guanzhong renshu de tongji baobiao [Shanghai Culture Bureau statistical report forms on films shown
in every cinema and number of viewers between April 1949 and June 1951].
67 SMA B172-1-29, Dui jinyibu xianzhi Ying Mei yingpian de juti yijian [Concrete proposals on progressively
restricting British and American films], 25 April 1950.
68 Yingjin Zhang, Chinese National Cinema, London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 189-198.
70 ‘Chinese People’s Victory,’ The Shanghai News, 5 October 1950.
71 ‘Current Chinese Movies,’ The Shanghai News, 25 June 1950.
72 SMA B171-1-33-29, Shanghai Shi Renmin Zhengfu Wenhua Ju Dianying Shiye Guanli Chu guanyu zhaokai
zuzhi suqing Mei di yingpian buliang yingxiang yanjiang hui de tongzhi [Shanghai People’s Government
Cultural Bureau, Film Industry Management Bureau Notification on convening and organising of meeting for
speeches on purging the harmful influence of American films], 29 November 1950.
73 David Crowley and Susan E. Reid (eds), Socialist Spaces: sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, Oxford:
Berg, 2002, pp. 1-22.
74 ‘“Race Course” - Yesterday & Today,’ The Shanghai News, ‘“Race Course” - Yesterday & Today,’ 6
September 1951.
75 Zhou et al, Shanghai waishi zhi, p. 322.
76 Than Than Nwe, ‘Yangon: The Emergence of a New Spatial Order in Myanmar's Capital City,’ Sojourn:
Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 13:1, 1998, pp. 86-113. I am indebted to Su Lin Lewis for this
observation.
77 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA),Washington, RG 59 General Records of the Dept of
State, 1950-54, Box 4197, Observations on the Effect of Communist Rule and the ‘Russian Invasion of
Shanghai’ by Albert Fraleigh,’ 6 January 1951.
78 Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 102-3.
79 For example: Sherman Cochran, ‘Capitalists Choosing Communist China; the Liu Family of Shanghai, 1948
-56,’ in Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz (eds) Dilemmas of Victory; the Early Years of the People’s
Republic of China, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 359-86.
80 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, London: Penguin, 2001, 1963, pp. 27-8, 119-20, 166.
81 TNA FO 676/525, Foreign business interest in China: Butterfield and Swires, 1955; J.K. Swire to Crowe,
Foreign Office, 4 March 1954; Shanghai to Beijing, No. 153, 5 May 1955.
82 Yang Kuisong, ‘Reconsidering the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries,’ The China Quarterly, 193,
2008, pp. 105-6, 120-1; Julia Strauss, ‘Paternalist Terror: The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and
Regime Consolidation in the People's Republic of China, 1950-1953’, Comparative Studies in Society and
History, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2002, p. 87.
83 TNA FO 676/499, Foreign business interest in China: Patons and Baldwins, 1954; Crowe to Trevelyan, 19
84 Nara Dillon, ‘New Democracy and the Demise of Private Charity in Shanghai,’ in Dilemmas of Victory, p. 92.
85 ‘2 Defy Reds from Roof, Leap to Death in China’, New York Times, 22 April 1952.
86 ‘Chinese Reds Call Magnate a Suicide,’New York Times, 14 March 1952; Zhao Xiaoling, Lu Zuofu de Xuanze
[Lu Zuofu’s Choice] (Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe [Guangdong People’s Publishing House], 2010), pp. 250
-66.
87 Thomas Clayton, ‘Building the New Cambodia: Educational Destruction and Construction under the Khmer
Rouge, 1975-1979,’ History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1, 1998, pp. 1-16.
88 TNA FO 371/83344, British Commercial Policy in China; Shanghai to Nanjing, No. 24, 11 January 1950.
89 NARA RG 59, Box 4210; Shanghai to Secretary of State, No. 820, 24 February 1950.
90 TNA FO 371/83344, British Commercial Policy in China; letter from Dzau to Gomersall, 4 January 1950.
91 NARA RG 59, Box 4197, 793.00/2-651; Memorandum of Conversation, Politico-Economic Conditions in
China, 6 February 1951.
